When Will White Progressives Leave Their Bubble?

In a brilliant Saturday Night Live skit, “The Bubble,” political progressives who are frightened after the presidential election build a literal bubble around their community so they don’t have to deal with the outside world. The main requirement for living in the Bubble is unquestioned alignment with white progressive viewpoints and cultural norms.

Instead of engaging with anyone who disagrees with their enlightened positions, progressives tend to dismiss them as being unaware, and therefore kick them outside of their bubble, never to consider their opinions again.

I watched this happen during the presidential campaign when many white progressives told people of color, poor white people, Bernie Sanders supporters, and Millennials they just “didn’t get it” if they weren’t excited about voting for Hillary Clinton. A segment of white progressives assumed their alleged foresight would inform the electorate and decide the election.

We all know how that went.

Post election, white progressives have spent more time telling people why they should care about their safety pins than strategizing around protecting the most vulnerable during a Trump presidency. Thousands of Facebook groups emerge as white progressives, mainly white women, talk about their new fears of living in a country they now feel hates them, as if no one else ever felt that way.

We can’t afford for white progressives to stay in their echo chambers. Our lives are literally at stake.

And yes, progressive white folks in the mainline church, this goes for you too.

White progressive folks in the church share superficially edgy Facebook statuses and think getting likes from other white progressives fulfills the requirement of denouncing privilege. They put on safety pins, yet never seem to hear us when black, brown, and queer folks say that’s not going to stop us from getting hate crimed and killed at disproportional rates. They choose to focus on themselves, writing endless think pieces centered in white panic and hypothetical danger instead of sharing first-person thoughts from people who could actually be victims of the surging hate crimes in the U.S. or whose videotaped murders likely wouldn’t result in a guilty verdict.

True allyship requires amplifying the voices of those of us who have been yelling “Black Lives Matter”; asking to use the restroom of our choice; saying “Mni Wiconi” to the Black Snake; demanding water that isn’t poisonous; and saying our loved ones belong here even if they weren’t born here. Oppressed people have been crying out to white progressives for amplification as a means to liberation, and now that we need it more than ever, white progressives—who have the least to lose—are ignoring us and obsessively talking to each other about their grief.

Meanwhile, folks like me have been grieving our oppression since its inception. This grief thing ain’t nothing new; white progressives are just choosing to honor its validity because they’re finally getting a taste of the fear associated with it.

Do the work with your racist relatives. Don’t run from that difficult family dinner or Facebook fight. Engage where others don’t feel safe. It’s not my job, or the job of any person of color, to engage with people about racism politely, or at all, when we aren’t perpetuators of it. White progressives not engaging with racists must realize the fact that they can even choose to engage without real risk is a privilege. Don’t confuse the inconvenience of engaging racists with the real danger people of color face when doing the same engagement.

Do the work within yourself to ask why you’ll write Facebook posts advocating for neighborhoods that you won’t drive through until they’re gentrified. Ask yourself why you’re comfortable crying and marching now that white women are in danger but were nowhere to be found during the original Million Woman March, when the organizers and marchers were black women.

I will hold Trump supporters and the Trump administration accountable in the next four years, but I will do the same for white progressives. Just because you’re not part of the most dangerous problem, doesn’t mean you’re not a problem at all.

If you’re a white progressive and your first thought is now, “Not all white progressives,” try popping your bubble and giving this another read.

Marchaé Grair is many things. A Netflix addict, puppy enthusiast, songbird, Millennial dreamer, and God lover, to name a few. She is the editor of New Sacred and Digital Content Manager for the United Church of Christ. Twitter: @MarchaeGrair

Perhaps we should remember a little history and then invite white-bashers to step outside of their bubble. The economist Deirdre McCloskey, has pointed out that for millennia the human species existed on about $3 per day. Around 1800 there began an astonishing change in which countries around the globe experienced over the next 200 years increases of ten-fold, thirty-fold, ninety-fold and even higher. This “great enrichment,” as she calls it, borders on miraculous when you consider that for thousands of years there had been virtually no change. What was the driving force behind the great enrichment? It was the ideas… Read more »

Good Lord, your ignorance of history is overshadowed only by your racist conceit. And your pride is completely misplaced since your grasp of historical fact and chronology is, speaking kindly, convenient. White men pillaged throughout history and sought to either demean or destroy cultures they did not understand. And they stole land, inventions, and discoveries from others (including their women and their slaves) and took credit for it. That the “capitalism” or “enlightenment” of which you speak? Pray tell if those men believed Africans or Native Americans were fully human? Or if women were equal to men? Your desperation to… Read more »

About

New Sacred is where progressive religion and progressive culture collide. We feature writers from popular sites such as Huffington Post Religion, Religion Dispatches, and For Harriet, as they tackle the taboos of church culture, trending topics, and personal triumphs and tragedies.

Sharing

Recent Posts

Links

Contact

Name

Email

Message

Comment Policy:

New Sacred aims to share diverse opinions about faith, culture, and the human experience. We encourage engaged comments and conversation on our blog. However; we will not tolerate emotionally or physically violent speech. We maintain the right to delete any comments we deem to fit within those categories.